3/27/12

The Israeli version of the Big Brother reality show (whose logo/symbol is the camera eye thingamajig seen above) has come under scrutiny for allegedly providing contestants with psychiatric drugs, giving me the perfect lead-in pun.

3/22/12

By now I'm sure you all have heard about the horrifying shooting attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. This act of depravity sickened me to my core in a way not experienced since the Fogel massacre. There are no words...UPDATE: Now chronologically the thirteenth repost by Daniel Dagan.UPDATE 2: Reposted and repurposed in altered format by Thai Facebooker Drama-addict.

3/18/12

Democracy, alas, is not an absolute virtue, and neither is it a miracle cure-all. Granting democracy to people who are unprepared or unfamiliar with it will simply lead to backsliding into the bad old days, and neither will it guarantee that absolutely rotten leaders will rise to the fore via entirely (or mostly entirely) legal means.
This specific cartoon was inspired by the anti-Western bellicosity displayed by the Muslim Brotherhood in their new role as Egypt's official largest political party. The guy on the right is, of course, classic Israeli symbol Srulik, marking the first time I deliberately set out to draw him instead of just a character vaguely resembling him. A noticeable goof here is that the way the feet and tree roots are arranged plays havoc with perspective: they really out to be better aligned. Ah well. Lesson for the future. (On the plus side, I'm really pleased at how Uncle Sam turned out.)

3/15/12

Ah, good old Kofi Annan. If your situation looks bad, don't worry: he'll find a way to make it worse. The current UN-Arab League special envoy to Syria, Annan and other UN Secretary Generals before him presided over such memorable "peacekeeping" cluster****s as the Rwandan Civil War, the Somalia Civil War, and the Kosovo conflict.

3/6/12

Jerusalem and its environs got about 3 inches of snow, closing the schools and halting public transportation (Beit Shemesh, alas, is still going strong in its 12th consecutive snowless year--exaplain that, climatologists!). This reaction, while normal for Israel, is a bit disproprtionate when compared to the kind of snowfall other countries get--serving as my inspiration for this cartoon. (Naturally, the olim in question are the ones from places like the USA, Europe, and Russia--South Americans and Ethiopians are likely to be just as excited as any native sabra.)
Bonus fact: Drawing people's eyes slightly askew makes them look 20% funnier.UPDATE: I think we can definitely call it a trend now, with La Boucle d'Occam's fifth reposting of my work overall and third within two months.Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Black marker
Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition

3/4/12

Yeah, Greece has been having a pretty tough time lately, hasn't it?
I'll admit this is not an exceptionally clever joke, or at least not as much as the two cartoons I subsequently saw punning on "Ode on a Greek Urn".

3/1/12

Six years after the last Teen Titans episode aired, the old gang has come back together in a series of shorts as part of CN's new "DC Nation" programming block. They are amusing and have the exact same kind of writing, acting, and design aesthetic as the old show, which was my #1 favorite on TV during the period in which it ran. Nothing would please me more if CN finally got its act together and started producing new seasons, which was why I made this bit of speculative fanart (okay, there sre many other things that would please me more, but you get the drift). This is, of course, a takeoff on the iconic lineup imagefrom the opening to Justice League Unlimited; in the final issue of the recursive comic book adaptation Teen Titans Go!, which continued after the show itself had been canned and hence less bound by executive meddling, the writer teased the fans by having Robin say the team was going to "go unlimited", referring to the transformation from the seven-man Justice League roster to the beefed-up JLU continuation--a logical next step already speculated by fans after the series finale, when a whole host of teenage heroes (most of them seen in the above image) had been gathered together to assist the main team.
On a side note, you would not believe how hard it is to find good quality pictures online for some of the Titans.UPDATE: Aha! Tumblr is being very kind to me now, even better than the first time. First used in a posting by titans-confessions (which funnily enough I discovered and read through earlier this week), it has since been reblogged and liked by far, far too many to mention here. Thanks guys! Titans go!Drawn using:
Adobe Photoshop CS3